MANOLIS PLIONIS is the Director and President of the BoD of the National Observatory of Athens, a Professor at the Physics Department of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Astrophysics, Optics & Electronics (INAOE) of Mexico and Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Science and Technology Museum NOESIS. He received a Mathematics degree from the University of Crete and a PhD in Observational Cosmology in 1989 from the University of Sussex in the UK, supervised by Professor John Barrow. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the SISSA International Research Center in Italy for about 5 years and at the ICTP International Center of Theoretical Physics for 1 year. He returned to Greece in 1995 as a Researcher at the National Observatory of Athens where he stayed until 2012. He has published over 200 scientific articles and many popular science articles, while he has supervised many Doctoral, Master and undergraduate theses. He is a member of the International Astronomical Union, a founding member and for four terms (until 2010) elected member of the Governing Board of the Hellenic Astronomical Society. He is also a founding member and elected member of the Governing Board for one term (2010-2012) of the Hellenic Society for Gravity, Relativity and Cosmology. His research interests are related to Observational Cosmology, Large-Scale Structure of the Universe and Extragalactic Astrophysics.